The Organizer (1963), Live Nude Girls, Unite! (2000), Daens (1992), Newsies (1992), The Pajama Game (1957), The Garment Jungle (1957), Hoffa (1992), Which Way Is Up? (1977) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Labor Union movies.
Storyline: Professor Sinigaglia (Marcello Mastroianni) is the title character in this darkly comedic Italian drama about mistreated factory workers in the city of Turin. Toiling away in appalling conditions in a textile mill, these employees have no one to stand up for them until Sinigaglia puts his academic career on the line by helping them to start a strike. Although the teacher comes under scrutiny by unsympathetic authorities, he maintains his dedication to the workers' cause.
Plot Keywords: working class, exploitation, poverty, protest, oppression, social injustice, class struggle ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: "Live Nude Girls Unite!" is a fierce and funny first person documentary about a group of strippers who win the only union of exotic dancers in the United States. Stripper/Comedian Julia Query takes the audience on a turbulent journey beginning with her decision to leave graduate school and start stripping through the victory with the union, stopping along the way to tell her Jewish mother.
Plot Keywords: documentary, women's rights, social justice, gender equality, workers' rights, social change, labor rights ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He's expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman's rape; children die; prelates play billiards.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: historical, drama, social, political, religious, class, exploitation ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: July, 1899: When Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst raise the distribution price one-tenth of a cent per paper, ten cents per hundred, the newsboys, poor enough already, are outraged. Inspired by the strike put on by the trolley workers, Jack "Cowboy" Kelly (Christian Bale) organizes a newsboys' strike. With David Jacobs (David Moscow) as the brains of the new union, and Jack as the voice, the weak and oppressed found the strength to band together and challenge the powerful.
Plot Keywords: musical, disney, historical, new york, rebellion, youth, inspirational ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Employees of the Sleeptite Pajama Factory are looking for a whopping seven-and-a-half cent an hour increase and they won't take no for an answer. Babe Williams is their feisty employee representative but she may have found her match in shop superintendent Sid Sorokin. When the two get together they wind up discussing a whole lot more than job actions!—A.L.Beneteau <albl@inforamp.net>
Plot Keywords: musical, romance, comedy, love, song and dance, broadway, adaptation ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: During the 1950s, the New York garment industry is going through a turmoil. On one side, the industry workers want to organize themselves into labor unions that will fight for them in obtaining better wages, better working conditions and other benefits. On the other side, the factory owners and their managers staunchly oppose unionization. At one of the largest garment companies, Roxton Fashions, the owner, Walter Mitchell, is fighting against his workers' wishes to unionize. For the past 15 years, Walter Mitchell has been using the mob muscle in order to protect his company against unions. His gangster friend Artie Ravidge, and his henchmen, provide Walter Mitchell and Roxton Fashions with such protection against union men who agitate the workers into forming their own union locals. This protection includes murder, whenever necessary, to eliminate stubborn union men. Unfortunately, when Walter Mitchell's business partner, Fred Kenner, argues in favor of allowing a union into their factory, he meets with a suspicious fatal accident. The freight elevator in which he was traveling plummets to the ground, after being serviced by a suspicious repair-man. After the funeral, Walter Mitchell's son, Alan Mitchell, who recently returns from the Korean War, starts asking questions about the rumors concerning Fred Kenner's assassination and about the role of the mob in his father's company. His father denies the rumors but his son becomes more suspicious. When a garment industry union organizer, Tulio Renata, comes into the factory and creates a scene, arguing with the factory owner and promising the forming of a union local for the workers, the owner's son starts making inquiries on his own, against his father's wishes. He befriends union man Tulio Renata in order to learn more about the just and fair aims of the union directed at the garment industry. First viewed with mistrust, the factory owner's son, gradually gains the respect and the trust of Renata, of the union men and the workers themselves. But this union-friendly attitude of Alan Mitchell draws the ire of his father who, once more, uses his gangster friend Artie Ravidge's services to eliminate his foes. Only, this time, his own son is on the side of the unions.—nufs68
Plot Keywords: crime, drama, thriller, film noir, corruption, murder, new york ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Jack Nicholson's portrait of Teamsters Union leader Jimmy Hoffa, as seen through the eyes of his friend Bobby Ciaro (Danny DeVito). This film follows Hoffa's struggle to shape America's most influential labor union through his countless battles with the RTA. As he fights for workers' rights, Hoffa locks horns with industry management, organized crime and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. In 1975, four years after serving his prison term, Hoffa disappears, in one of America's most fascinating unsolved crime mysteries.
Plot Keywords: biography, crime, drama, history, gangster, political, true story ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Richard Pryor plays three roles: Leroy Jones, a poor orange-picker who gets laid off for accidentally joining the workers' union during one of their demonstrations; Leroy's father, whom Leroy leaves behind with the rest of his family to go to Los Angeles; and Reverend Lenox Thomas, who gets Leroy's wife Annie Mae pregnant during Leroy's absence. In Los Angeles, Leroy ends up working for the same company that fired him back home; he is a manager at the company but is now distant from his former pals. Though married, he falls in love with labor organizer Vanetta and must divide his time between her and Annie Mae. When he discovers that Annie Mae is pregnant by Reverend Thomas, he puts the moves on Mrs. Thomas.—mts77
Plot Keywords: comedy, satire, social class, race, labor rights, african american, working class ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Hunt Stevenson works for a large car manufacturer that has just been bought out by a Japanese firm. Suddenly finding himself having to justify his own job, he's forced to choose between redundancy or the seemingly inhuman Japanese work ethic that the new owners have brought with them.
Plot Keywords: comedy, workplace, culture clash, teamwork, humor, satire, 1980s ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In the California apple country, 900 migratory workers rise up "in dubious battle" against the landowners. The group takes on a life of its own - stronger than its individual members and more frightening. Led by the doomed Jim Nolan (Nat Wolff), the strike is founded on his tragic idealism - on the "courage never to submit or yield." Published in 1936, the novel "In Dubious Battle" is considered the first major work of Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck.
Plot Keywords: social injustice, protest, class conflict, oppression, workers' rights, poverty, solidarity ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Manhattan gangster John "Czar" Martin enters the trucking business in an effort to control the produce market. When he catches popular trucker Danny Jordan robbing the gang's office to provide for his pregnant wife Nora, Martin forces Jordan to join him. As the other truckers come around Martin appears to have won.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: crime, gangster, drama, 1930s, usa, corruption, violence ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Communists blackmail a San Francisco shipper (Robert Ryan) and recruit his wife's (Laraine Day) brother (John Agar) with a blonde.
Plot Keywords: film noir, cold war, propaganda, espionage, communism, usa, 1950s ...
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